I will never return to this city

Last weekend I had to use failed forms of public transportation for my new annual “Tour of Depressing East Coast Cities,” because driving from our nation’s capital to New York is nearly impossible with the East Coast’s exotic toll roads and turn pikes.

It’s a confusing system designed to intimidate the Midwestern driver who does not experience such things on a daily basis.

For this reason I started my journey by purchasing a ticket for a Megabus to Philadelphia, a city constructed on a foundation of broken dreams and oil refineries.

I arrived at 30th Street station at about five in the evening and decided that one of those Philly cheese steaks would be great idea for dinner. What I did not know is that Philadelphia closes exactly at 5 p.m. They lock the doors and homeless bards venture out from the alleyways telling jokes in return for money. If you refuse they get salty, if you pay them they spit on your shoes. It’s a lose-lose situation.

I will never return to this city if I have the choice.

The next stop on my tour of depressing east coast cities was Trenton, NJ. As you enter the city limits you’ll see a very large red sign that says “Trenton Makes – The World Takes”

Trenton’s main exports are fear and abandoned buildings. Nearly every window in Trenton is boarded up. Like in Philadelphia, stores close early in Trenton. Every business in Trenton closed in 1968, and it looks like they will be so indefinitely.   

I spent a good deal of my time riding around in a car with the doors locked. The only nice part of Trenton that I saw was the train station, from which people flee this god forsaken city every day.

I will never return to this city if I have the choice.

From Trenton I took a train to New York City, AKA the big apple, AKA the city that never sleeps, AKA the city that cannot contain its bladder.

From the moment I stepped off the train at Penn Station, I was hit with the welcoming smell of open sewers. In New York City feces and urine are smeared on the walls and floor and not contained in pipes underground.

The men’s bathroom in Penn Station must have been the filthiest place I’ve ever been. Nearly every toilet was backed up with soggy TP.

On the subway I witnessed a fight over a simple nudging.

Above ground things are much nicer in New York City. The buildings are like man-made mountains and they keep the blight far away from where a tourist like me would go.

At night I visited Times Square, a magical place where a white naked cowboy and a group of militant black-Hebrew nationalists can draw adjacent crowds without confrontation.

But the most impressive part about my visit to New York City must have been that the entire time I was walking around Manhattan I only saw one pantless hobo.

I will probably return to this city if I have the chance.


E-mail: nicjacob@indiana.edu